Bill Harris founded Facilitated Systems in 1999 to help people by helping the organizations in which they spend so much of their time. He uses a number of approaches to help them make sense of the puzzles and problems organizations face.

Thursday, December 22, 2005

The Joy of Thinking Small revisited

Just over a month ago, I blogged about some small, free tools I had found. I thought I might let you know which ones I've continued to use.

I definitely still use Ledger. I've found it easy to set up, easy to use, and informative in what it tells me. It's also helped me understand accounting better than other, more GUIfied tools I've used. It's not built for large company applications, but it works well for Facilitated Systems and for my private needs. Here's a tip I've found useful: I make an online list (I use emacs-wiki, although it sounds as if I should move to MuseMode) of useful commands for generating reports I typically use. That saves time in rediscovering useful options (there are lots!). Eventually, I'll likely make scripts to do common tasks.

I still use PWGen for Windows, too. I had written my own program to generate passwords, but PWGen is faster to use, and I trust they did a better job than I did at creating unguessable passwords. I'd still use Diceware, too, but I haven't had the need recently.

I occasionally use the Hipster PDA. To be honest, I mostly use the backs of junk mail for notes and jottings. That's even less expensive than index cards, but the Hipster still intrigues me. Perhaps I just haven't tried hard enough with PocketMod or The Printable CEO™. Along with those paper planning tools, I've learned that planner-mode is more valuable than I had thought, and I'm expanding my use of that tool.

2 Comments:

Hi, Sacha. Thanks for dropping by (and for your work on planner)! I've got to figure out if moving from emacs-wiki-mode to muse-mode requires any manual upgrading to my files. Between planner and my wiki-mode stuff, I've got quite a bit. Skimming your manual reminds me of all the configuration work I can still do, too!